Facts about terrorism

* In the 1980s, the CIA spent billions of dollars helping the ISI set up camps to arm and train Islamic jehadis who were sent into Afghanistan to fight the Russians. At that stage, Osama bin Laden was an US ally, whom Washington regarded as a freedom fighter. (Though why a Saudi should want to fight for Afghan freedom was never made clear.) Once the Afghan jehad was over and America withdrew, Washington was extremely naïve if it believed that it could just walk away from these terror camps. The jehadis needed new targets. And the ISI knew how to train them — and where to send them.

* We argued that the Kashmir insurgency began in 1989 just as the Afghan operation ended. The international jehadis (Saudis, Yemenis, Sudanese etc) who had come to fight in Afghanistan were now being diverted to Kashmir. The next step would be for them to target civilians in the rest of India. And eventually, the terror would reach the West. Nobody listened to us. Instead they bought the Pakistani propaganda about a Kashmiri freedom struggle.

* After the Bombay blasts in India, India appealed again to the international community and warned that the terror was spreading. Indiasaid that ISI had now become a state within a state and posed a danger to world peace. Nobody listened to us again.

* When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan on behalf of their ISI mentors, destroyed the Bamiyan Buddhas and forced Hindus to wear a yellow band, we tried to draw the West’s attention to this appalling situation. Nobody cared; not even when IC-814 was hijacked to Kandahar as part of an ISI operation and three dangerous terrorists were released from Indian prisons and promptly found shelter in Pakistan.

* One of those terrorists, Maulana Masood Azhar, openly addressed meetings stirring up anti-Indian and anti-American feeling. The second, Omar Sheikh, killed the American journalist Daniel Pearl when, as a new book reveals, he came too close to unraveling ISI’s links with the terror networks. The third, Latram, came back to Kashmir to murder more civilians. The Pakistani authorities did what they could to help all three — just as they continue to provide shelter to Dawood Ibrahim (and Osama bin Laden?).

* Two years ago, Benazir Bhutto told the HT Leadership Initiative in Delhi that retired Generals and ISI bosses had made millions out of the Afghan operation. They now ran private armies and terrorist camps. They were out of the reach of the Pakistan government. The West paid no attention to this shocking revelation by a former Pakistani Prime Minister.
Now, after the London bombings, Pakistan is suddenly the focus of global attention. General Musharraf has promised to crack down on terrorists, his nose growing longer by the minute. Washington has asked Pakistan to close down the terrorist camps. And there is a growing recognition that the real threat to world peace does not come from Iraq or Iran. It comes from Pakistan.